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How do I restore all my tabs after Firefox crashed and the option is not available?

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  • Last reply by russ93

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I admittedly have way too many tabs in one session, but haven't had too many problems with concerning losing any tabs or being unable to restore my previous session. However, Firefox froze while I was browsing and I restarted my computer and opened up Firefox and was not able to restore my previous tabs. Usually if I restart my computer without exiting Firefox, the option always is available when I reboot Firefox. I am not sure why this is suddenly not an option, but I am desperate to get these tabs back, or even just a list of what each one was instead of the actual tabs. I read about ways to do this, but some seem dated and I did not understand how to do any of them. I am not sure how to find sessionstore.bak/js, which seems to be the most recommended way of fixing this issue. I currently have Windows 10 with the latest version of Firefox as of this posting. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I admittedly have way too many tabs in one session, but haven't had too many problems with concerning losing any tabs or being unable to restore my previous session. However, Firefox froze while I was browsing and I restarted my computer and opened up Firefox and was not able to restore my previous tabs. Usually if I restart my computer without exiting Firefox, the option always is available when I reboot Firefox. I am not sure why this is suddenly not an option, but I am desperate to get these tabs back, or even just a list of what each one was instead of the actual tabs. I read about ways to do this, but some seem dated and I did not understand how to do any of them. I am not sure how to find sessionstore.bak/js, which seems to be the most recommended way of fixing this issue. I currently have Windows 10 with the latest version of Firefox as of this posting. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

All Replies (14)

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Do you have Microsoft Word? I wrote a macro that will scrounge URLs out of a damaged session history file, so you could try that with what you have.

https://jeffersonscher.com/res/SessionExtract.docm

Word is extremely cautious about macros in downloaded files, as you should be, since they can be as powerful as other kinds of software downloads. However, I haven't taken the time to try to convert it to some other kind of tool.

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I'm not sure how to use it with the recovery.bak files.

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In order to feed data to the macro, you need to paste it into the Word document. Can you open the recovery.bak file in a text editor or in Word itself so you can copy/paste from there?

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Opening it in Word results in the entire document being filled with small empty squares.

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It definitely sounds like the recovery was not successful. Session history files are plain text inside. If that's the only recovery.bak file, I think we've reached the end of the road.

Is there any possibility you are not logged in normally? Having no upgrade.js files and only one restore point just strikes me as very odd, or maybe you have software running that is constantly cleaning up your system and removing those things.

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I do occasionally clear browsing history, but other than that, I don't think I have anything that would clear it. Recuva also found a recovery.bak file from September so should I try the original method using that? How do I know if I'm logged in correctly?

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Also noticed that the file path in Recuva for the September recovery.bak and the one I have been trying to use have a path that is just a question mark so I don't know if they means anything.

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You could shut down Windows and start it up again to make sure you are logged into Windows correctly.

Try whatever files you have.

I don't know what a file path of ? means to Recuva.

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The other file had the same result. Is there literally nothing else I can do?

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Is there a way I can access crash reports and see what tabs I had during the crash?

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I don't think Firefox crash reports store all your tabs, for privacy reasons; you have the option to include or not include the address of the page you were on when Firefox crashed (if you get the Mozilla Crash Reporter dialog).

If the crash data was recorded by Windows instead of Firefox, there may be other data I don't know about.

If no session history can be restored, you are left with the task of looking at your history to identify pages you want to re-open.

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I looked back at my history and found that only the tabs that were actively being opened/used appear in the history. All of the other tabs that had not been open during that session do not appear in the history. I do occasionally clear history while leaving all the tabs in place, so I don't know if this erased them all from my history or if there is a way to go back and look at previous history, etc.

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Firefox doesn't keep backups of history. All history is stored in a database file named places.sqlite (you may see other file names starting with places that are companion files; those are not usable). You could check System Restore Explorer for any earlier versions of places.sqlite.

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Well I only had one restore point and it was from after the crash, so I'm not sure I'd find anything useful. I think I'm at a dead end at this point and will just start fresh. Thank you for your help and patience! If there is anything else you can think of, please let me know.

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